Re: EPUB 3.3 spec conformity issues

[Gavin Smith]

On Wed, Aug 21, 2024 at 05:59:03PM +0200, Patrice Dumas wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 20, 2024 at 09:23:57AM +0100, Daniel Cerqueira wrote:
> >
> > The dcterms:modified meta element is MANDATORY in order to create a
> > valid EPUB 3.3 file. It is missing in the current Texinfo EPUB file
> > creation. Here is an code example on how to implement this inside the
> > EPUB file:
> > 
> > According to: https://www.w3.org/TR/epub-33/#sec-metadata-last-modified
> 
> I agree on the issue, but I do not think that the last modified date
> should be the date of the epub file generation, it should rather be the
> date of the publication contents or style modification.  None of the
> Dublin core nor the EPUB format specification are clear on what the
> modification date should correspond to in term of changes, but my
> reading of the EPUB specification is that it is about the published
> material, not about the epub file creation date.  I also think that it
> is much better to have this date correspond to the change in contents
> not to the generation.

There is also an issue that some have argued that builds of software
packages should be reproducible as far as possible.

https://reproducible-builds.org/

If the generation date went in the output it would not be reproducible.


> > I consider this to be a bug, because the EPUB file created by `texi2any`
> > is not according to the specs.
> 
> We do not try to follow standards for the sake of it, but if there are
> actual issues.  Here it would be better to be conforming, as the
> modification date is used in readers, but it is not such a big issue
> either, as it does not prevent the readers to render the epub files.

It seems that EPUB standards compliance is more important (as far as
EPUB itself is important) than HTML standards compliance.  The EPUB
format appears to be fairly concisely and precisely defined, as far
I can tell, when compared with HTML, and may be more stable.